Press Releases

Ryan Speaks to Rock and Walworth County Residents during Telephone Town Hall Meeting

WASHINGTON, DC — Yesterday evening, Wisconsin’s First District congressman and speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, spoke to thousands of Rock and Walworth County residents during a telephone town hall.

Excerpts of Ryan’s answers to questions follow:

Addressing executive overreach:

“In two weeks [we] are bringing to the floor what we call an amicus brief. [We] will pass a resolution filing a brief at the Supreme Court on the president’s executive amnesty, because this is a case where the Supreme Court has said: ‘Congress’s Article I powers . . . is being called into question by the executive branch.’ The president, through an executive order, tried to unilaterally rewriting law. And that bleeds into the legislative branches prerogatives.”

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“And so, [Congress] is actually making a very important statement, I think . . . that the executive branch has [attempted] to usurp the legislative branch’s powers by unilaterally writing law, which is not the power of the executive branch. I will be bringing this case through Congress. We will be voting on it in two weeks, and presenting it to the Supreme Court, because we believe the president has gone so far that he has actually crossed over into the jurisdiction the Constitution sets up for the legislative branch.”

Reining in government spending:

“We’ve put the plans out there on how you cut spending; how you get our spending to equal our revenues. . . . We have an $18 trillion dollar debt now. [The next generation] is going to inherit a mountain of debt that is unlike anything we’ve seen in this country before. What that means is, they will get a lower standard of living than we have today. We have never, in the history of this country, severed the legacy of leaving the next generation better off. But, if we do stay on this fiscal path that we are on, we will be racking up deficits and debt in our generation that we will give to [the next generation]. My kids are 11, 12, and 14, and we live in Janesville, Wisconsin. Your nieces are in high school. They are going to have to pay our bills for us when they are adults paying taxes.”